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LA Airport Uses Random Numbers To Catch Terrorists
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Sep 30, 2007 08:27 AM
from the better-than-searching-me-whenever-i-have-a-beard dept.
from the better-than-searching-me-whenever-i-have-a-beard dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is using randomization software to determine the location and timing of security checkpoints and patrols. The theory is that random security will make it impossible for terrorists to predict the actions of security forces. The ARMOR software, written by computer scientists at the University of Southern California, was initially developed to solve a problem in game theory. Doctoral student Praveen Paruchuri wrote algorithms on how an agent should react to an opponent who has perfect information about the agent's choices."
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Submission: LA Airport Uses Random Numbers To Catch Terrorists by Anonymous Coward
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Security Through Obscurity! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Security Through Obscurity! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
The Art of war (Score:5, Insightful)
--Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
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Just send more operatives (Score:5, Insightful)
If you send one operative you have a 50% chance of one getting through.
Send two and you have a 75% chance of at least one getting through.
Send ten and you have a 99.9% chance of at least one getting through.
The handy thing about many organisations is that they are willing to play the numbers.
Parent
Re:Just send more operatives (Score:5, Insightful)
But that's only if you assume that security doesn't react in any way to the discovery of an operative, which is of course false. Once any operative is found, security will then force ALL passengers to be rescreened at that location, and increase security at other locations temporarily as well.
So sending in one operative gives you a 50/50 chance of being successful.
Send two and you have only a 25% chance of successfully penetrating security.
Send ten and you're virtually guaranteed to initiate a complete lockdown of all air traffic in the country.
Parent
Re:Security Through Obscurity! (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing about having "Perfect Knowledge" of a patrol or observation pattern, is that you have to expect certain variations anyways, and plan accordingly, but the polar bear under the ice is that you also have to expect certain regularities, certain things that repeat, regardless of schedule. Most unit commanders and security bosses have had to learn this the hard way, and after they loose a certain amount of confidence in human nature, they learn how to manipulate it to make their facility more secure.
A low level security guard is going to look at the schedule, and try to make it conform to his own sense of order, rounding up or down patrol times, falsifying patrols, or just plain blowing off the whole schedule entirely. After going through more than a few guards, the commander is going to have to admit, that going against human nature is not only counter productive, but dangerous. The radio messages, audio stimulus, and other auditory or visual stimulus that is used to keep the pattern random, can always be intercepted and used to an opponent's advantage, and with the high turnover rate already present in security jobs, it is a simple matter to place somebody on location that can compromise everything.
What the commander has to do is assume that his bottom line guards are going to be compromised, individually. For instance, he can safely assume, that at even if all of his guards are compromised that very few of them are going to entrust that fact with another guard. By identifying the loners on guard staff, he can group them in pairs, or triplets that are socially incompatible, and thus untrusting of one another. Since self preservation is a stronger human reaction than loyalty, the commander has to rely on this to prevent an actual incursion.
In military units, officers do not mix much with enlisted, and doing so can mean punishment or even jail time for the offenders. The reason for this, is that if two groups are not socially compatible, and they have a common stated goal, then the change of a conspiracy amongst the two is greatly reduced. If The officers decided as a group to betray, then military code would force the enlist, or non-commissioned officers to act against it, and visa versa.
The military relies on routine, because, unlike the scientist with his computer driven, game theory approach, they know it works. If patrols become regular, then is easier for those patrols to spot anything out of order. The only way to have consistent security, is to have reliable, consistent, and above all, complete coverage of the facility.
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Re:Security Through Obscurity! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Security Through Obscurity! (Score:5, Interesting)
Damn right. A few years back, my hometown was in the midst of a crime wave, and at the business where I worked, a guy was hired to go and deposit money in the bank. The first thing management told him was to never, ever repeat the same route nor schedule twice in a row. At first, the guy followed this advice, but after a couple of weeks, probably without even realizing it, he fell into a mindless, hurried routine that you could set your watch by. Within a month, he was ambushed - his car was crashed into at an intersection, then when he got off to inspect the damage, a gun was pointed at his temple.
A few days later, the guy resigned and I was given bank duty for a while, and I dare you to try and discern a pattern in the way I handled this baby. Once out of the office, I had six options to choose from within a half block in either direction (east, then straight, left or right - west, then left or right). Sometimes I stalled for up to three hours before dashing off, sometimes I repeated the same route three times at different hours, just to confound whoever might be watching.
To take it up a notch from the PP, here's the twist: Management itself, for all their initial concerns, began dropping hints about other needs I wasn't taking into consideration, such as needing the money deposited within a certain hour. After the assault and robbery shake-up, the organization became open to flexibility, then soon after went back to rigid, routine expectations, downgrading safety for convenience. As an example, the financial department was screaming for regularity, to sort out money movements by X hour.
Within a few months, an armored car service opened in town, which my company hired immediately, and things went back to normal.
Now here's my point: it's not just the grunts, it's also the supervisors and management. On paper, somebody's gonna have to wrack their brain and work harder to schedule activities that follow no pattern, probably for the same amount of pay. Supervisors will constantly have to change their schedules accordingly. There will be initial grudging compliance on all levels, then resistance will manifest itself through groaning, then procrastination turning into inaction. To change organizational habits, an initial push towards implementation is not enough, somebody has to really exert pressure for a long, long time, and who's going to do it, old employees? Unlikely. New employees? A big possibility they'll be sucked into the organizational culture within a couple of unhappy months. You have to find and hire the right outside person, and that'll take a bit of luck, never mind Game Theory, an old and iffy construction that's always caused more harm than good when applied in "real life".
Going offtopic here, and as crazy as it may sound, I do miss the bank deposits, as they turned weekdays into an adventure. First of all, it was a daily shot of adrenaline. And then, there was the deposit itself, not through regular bank tellers, but within a backdoor bank vault, a security-clearance (automated door, long hallway, automated door), CC-monitored bizarro world where the same hungover guys from other companies deposited every day, and the bank employees always kept ice-cold beer for us... in the morning. To get the beer to us on the other side of the 8-inch glass, it had to go through the same time-delay security mechanisms that we placed the ingoing deposits into. It was a small space with no chairs, so we sat on the floor, drinking beer out of paper cones, a thick cloud of cigarette smoke hanging in the air, crushed butts and cones strewn on the floor. After a while, you find yourself regarding this as normal. Talk about organizational culture.
Parent
Re:Security Through Obscurity! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it didn't. In some ways this sounds like the opposite of security through obscurity. I'd feel more secure with a system whose entire workings was public knowledge, but that was still effective enough to be difficult to penetrate. Randomness is a great way of doing that. You may know, as a potential attacker, how the system is set up, but if you don't know where the people and equipment will be the best you can do is take an informed risk. It also makes it harder to do things like purchase information about the system: it's little use to bribe a guard for the schedule if he doesn't know it until he starts his shift (and then may only know his first task, not the remainder of his schedule).
To my mind, security through obscurity would be setting up a very complicated schedule, then overconfidently assuming that an attacker won't figure it out. There are lots of cases where randomness increases security (e.g. random strings as passwords).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the seed for the random number generator should probably be kept secret. Or there should be no seed, there should be hardware randomness so without that data stream, there's no way to predict. Not sure how you distribute the schedule in real time from the hardware random generator to the actual officers and keep it from being eavsdropped on, but I guess encrypted communications can be assumed...
Randomizing responses to break a protocol... (Score:5, Interesting)
The same strategy goes for when you don't want to interact with certain individuals, solicitors, pan-handlers and so on -- when they ask for you attention, reply with something completely unrelated, for example "Can you spare some change? -No thanks, I'm good. -Huh?...that don't make no sense..." by the time they processes the confusing statement you already walked too far and they'll focus on the next person.
Another example, say you are having a heated debate with someone. When the argument is the most intense immediately switch and start arguing against your position. Ok, that's more for fun...The actual strategy is to use non-sequiturs. Statements that at first sound normal but when you think about them they just don't make any sense. Stuff like "How do you know that's what you mean?" That statement has to be immediately followed by whatever real point you are trying to make. The brain is trying to process the non-sequitur and it keeps getting segfaulting-ing, but because you keep talking it is also forced to keep up with the argument. Eventually they just remain quiet. If they ask you to repeat the non-sequitur pretend you said something else or make fun of them for being slow.
Randomizing your response is a good way to throw off an opponent. They expect a certain response or reaction but they are getting something else. That gives you a short window of opportunity while the opponent tries to process or guess your next move. Of course your moves have a degree of randomness (that you control) and it is pointless for them to spend resources (mental, computational) to look for patterns in randomness.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Security Through Obscurity! (Score:5, Insightful)
By truly randomizing protocols, I can no longer plan for one or two specific scenarios but must be ready for hundreds. This increases the time, energy, and manpower it takes me to prep and execute a mission. In fact, if I can't bank on the fact that there will NOT be a canine unit to take my plastic through security I may change my approach and try to work from a stand-off position rather then a close-end. This makes it easier for security because I can fortify and create choke points in and around my perimeter.
Security Through Obscurity relies on your ability to hide something alone (hiding a key) versus what this is (moving the key every 4 hours and randomizing the patrols in and around the key). There is quite a bit of difference between the two.
Parent
Re:Security Through Obscurity! (Score:5, Funny)
Staff sergeant: "Ok, Ralph" *rolls dice* "you are going to move 4 feet to the left."
Parent
random != arbitrary (Score:3)
Government vs Commercial (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My $2 opinion. (Weak dollar) (Score:5, Insightful)
The only time I've heard of a Gov. employee getting fired was because they let someone go through with a weapon.
Then there are the stewardesses. Since 9/11 you'd think someone anointed them in Flight Goddesses. Complain about something and the next thing you know, you're being taken away in hand cuffs.
Because of a few jerks in the world, flying has become just one big bullshit hassle. Which, for my own sanity, I refuse all jobs that require travel - bills be damned! Of course now with all the screening software, a bad credit rating will get you a second look by the TSA.
I may have to move to Vermont.
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Re:Government vs Commercial (Score:4, Interesting)
I live is Switzerland and we don't have any noticeable train security. They may be some security cameras but the only 'security' I see are the conductors and they are usually friendly and just want to see your ticket. BTW, the trains are very safe, too. No terrorists and very few accidents.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Or the news in 1998.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster [wikipedia.org]
I fail to see what bad maintenance practice has to do with terrorism.
There have been several incidents in Germany where terrorists were picked up just in time to prevent them blowing up a train, here is one of them:
Suit case bombs(Print version) [stern.de]
(Sorry when you didn't pay attention in your German classes)
Why, I think you are wrong! (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Government vs Commercial, or Train vs. Airplane? (Score:4, Informative)
It's comparing apples and oranges, as far as I can tell. It describes private security companies and "posses" pursuing known perpetrators in the 19th century. This is essentially police work, and is a quite different issue from preventing unknown threats from boarding in the first place. It claims that going after criminals is better than screening large numbers of non-criminals. Well duh, the problem is to find out who the criminals are, in a way that safely prevents them from carrying out whatever acts they're trying to carry out.
The article also says the private companies also sent guards on trains to foil robberies and such. Well, that's what federal air marshals are for. We've already got those. The article appears to be arguing that we just need the air marshals, and don't need any airport screening. Well, that's debatable, but as far as I am concerned, it doesn't have much to do with private vs. government security.
I think the situation with train robbers vs., say, suicide bombers is quite different. The article gives an example of train robbers who threatened to blow up the train if they weren't allowed to escape. Well, that's quite different from a guy who intends to die with everyone else: he's got no reason to negotiate. If you let him on with a bomb, you've already lost, unless you're really, really counting on those air marshals or helpful passengers (a la Richard Reid). It's a harder security problem.
Finally, the article says that the railroads booted troublemakers off the premises instead of letting them board the trains. It also says that federal law prohibits airlines from doing the same. I don't understand this; I've certainly read news stories about suspicious passengers being removed from planes, and of course TSA can prevent them from boarding in the first place.
Now, I am not trying to argue in favor of draconian airport screening, but I think the differences between security against train robbers and security against airline terrorists have more to do with the completely different settings and goals, rather than private vs. government administration of the security measures.
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Behind the scenes in Homeland Security... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Behind the scenes in Homeland Security... (Score:5, Funny)
int numCheckpointsToday()
{
return 0;
}
(With apologies to xkcd).
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Doesn't Microsoft hold patents on that? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Doesn't Microsoft hold patents on that? (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong! It is random, actually. It's right there in the summary of the
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Re:Doesn't Microsoft hold patents on that? (Score:5, Funny)
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Joel Spolsky thinks it's a rendering bug. (Score:3, Interesting)
wily terrorists (Score:3, Funny)
All they have to do is predict these random numbers ahead of time... Using a dice.
Re:wily terrorists (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Discovery Institute is mad. (Score:3, Funny)
Elementary (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably not. It probably takes more nerve and marketing skills than I have to stand up and demand the world for what is essentially an elementary idea that anybody who thinks about the issue should come up with.
Not elementary! (Score:5, Informative)
Remember, there are many ways to be random: check area X Y% of the time; perform check W Z% of the time, etc. What should Y and Z be? How do you balance the occurrence of Type I and Type II errors? [wikipedia.org] Some strategies are better than others: there's a reason why game theory was invented.
Try reading the study [usc.edu]; the results are not trivial.
Parent
What happens if... (Score:4, Funny)
set of locations? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you figure this is a sizable force, and that all of them use the randomization software, four years worth of recon (TFA gave that as a time period for pre-strike operations) ought to give the terrorist enough information to know where these "random points" are. I mean, there has to be a defined set of locations somewhere in the program, they can't just be using coordinates. Imagine, a security guard climbing into an oven at the pizza place at the airport because "a computer told him to" (and the following lawsuits.)
How do they account for the fact that there will always be an area that these security forces don't patrol because no one told the computer that the place exists.
Anyone know how they manage telling the computer which places exist?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you figure this is a sizable force, and that all of them use the randomization software, four years worth of recon (TFA gave that as a time period for pre-strike operations) ought to give the terrorist enough information to know where these "random points" are.
You're missing the point. The analysis assumes that the terrorist already knows that information anyway. The adversary is assumed to have perfect information about the randomization strategy, where the checkpoints are, etc. Then a randomization strategy is designed to minimize failures even in light of this information.
How do they account for the fact that there will always be an area that these security forces don't patrol because no one told the computer that the place exists.
That is a better point, but we don't know whether there have been lapses in specifying the layout of the airport. (Of course, there will always be security holes that nobody has thought
Not a bad idea over all (Score:4, Interesting)
As it is DHS involved, I fully expect them to fuck it up and apply it wrong, but having some truly random security is a good way to make things generally more difficult, even to an adversary with a lot of resources to try and find a weakness.
Randomization of security (Score:3, Interesting)
However - security checks are still only one component. For example today's airport buildings are largely a huge open place which means that maximum effect may be obtained outside any security checkpoints today. By reducing the queues to check-ins and building compartments the effective radius of an attack will be contained to a much smaller area.
A theoretical method would be to do image analysis and pattern analysis of behavior, but since the behavior pattern varies much from person to person it will create a large number of false alarms.
So.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty Useless ... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can not fight someone who is going to blow themselves up. I would think that airplanes probably no longer matter. If you get through fine, if not blow yourself up in a crowded terminal. Probably get more folks that was as well.Especially when so many virgins and good shit is at stake.
The chance of getting blown up (even if you believe the shit ol w and the ol boys say about all the foiled plots) is still less than traveling by car.
Smart, really smart (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
So, in order to improve airport security you give "vast amounts" of classified data about airport security to a collection of grad students to input into a program that produces allegedly randomized output.
Uh, there are plenty of grad students with security clearances: they work on classified research projects, like this one. You think you can't have a clearance if you are a student or something?
Or do you think there's something wrong with giving classified data to people with security clearances, just because they're also grad students?
Why not? (Score:4, Funny)
Read the analysis here (Score:4, Insightful)
Where's the news? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What if the US just doesn't piss other people o (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I'll bet that oftentimes it's different people saying the two different things. And in cases where it's the SAME person, we have inaction in Rwanda during a genocide, inaction in Congo during a Genocide, and action in Iraq so that there would be an easy cover for laundering money.
Does anyone have any real number on what percentage of the cost of the war is contracts with private companies? Because we saved lots of money on body armor, armored vehicles, and training for the troops. We can certainly expect to see the same frugality in the area of private contracts, I'm sure.
The government paying private contractors does not constitute privatization.
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Re:What if the US just doesn't piss other people o (Score:5, Interesting)
Try Googling these two phrases lifted from your comment "America's inaction in Darfur" and "US government just stops meddling in the affairs of other nations". The first page of each I think is very telling. One is full of American websites, the other is full of foreign websites.
I think this is representative of who you are hearing - two different groups, one composed of Americans and the other composed of the peoples you are meddling with.
(before someone rips into me, I am not expressing any opinion about Darfur, just pointing out that probably the people screaming the loudest for American action in Darfur are Americans. I know that here in Canada I have never heard anyone suggest it is an American problem; every person who brings it up wants the Canadian government to take action)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We should simply attack islam. After all it is against human rights, against democracy and against just about everything else we stand for.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Try keeping up with the news. Over there in the perfect state of Iran where nothing is out of place, they are having a couple problems. Drugs from Afghanistan and gay sex and AIDS.
http://www.losangeleschronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=37725 [losangeleschronicle.com]